Zoos are the problem, not the solution to animal conservation

In the past month the deaths of
animals in captivity have highlighted continuing concerns around conservation.
Zoos are entertainment, and while they contribute to conservation they don’t
provide any real solution. Wildlife can only be saved by empowering their protection
in their own natural habitats—and that means we have to work with local
communities and not against them.

On 28th May 2016,
for example, Harambe,
a captive born gorilla, was shot dead after a young boy fell into his enclosure
at the Cincinnati Zoo in the United States. One week earlier, two
lions were destroyed at Santiago’s Metropolitan Zoo in Chile, and a week
before that a Sumatran elephant called Yani
died in the notorious Surabaya Zoo in Indonesia. An online discussion has
exploded about each of these sad cases, but by and large it’s a debate that
excludes the views of those most important for success.

Opponents of zoos such as Marc
Bekoff, a behavioural ecologist and professor emeritus at the University of
Colorado, argue that an animal’s life in captivity is a shadow of their
experience in the wild. Proponents of zoos such as the World
Association of Zoos and Aquariums counter that the conservation benefits
zoos provide outweigh the isolated (albeit tragic) costs paid by the animals
involved.

On social media zoo
supporters say that captive animals serve as conservation ‘ambassadors’ for
their wild counterparts, and that zoos are a ‘Noah’s Ark’ that provides a buffer
against the decline of endangered species. In truth, this is a script that even
the zoo industry has quietly
abandoned.

While some species such as
oryx, wolves and condors have benefited from captive
breeding programmes, there is precious little evidence that zoo bred
genetics are being used to strengthen wild populations of gorillas, elephants
and dolphins. Zoos recognise that they have insufficient space to engage in successful
breeding programmes for large mammals, and are unable to accommodate more than
the smallest fraction of the world’s 22,784
species that are threatened with extinction. So why do zoos persist?

Zoos began life as
amusements, and while they have evolved they still exist to make money and tap into
a wealthy societal appetite for entertainment. But at a deeper level they are
key components of an international conservation system that resembles the West’s colonial
and racial past. This system believes that communities in parts of the world
where most endangered species live are a problem
that must be fixed—most often by acquiring traditional lands, establishing camps
and other experiences for wealthy tourists, and employing gun-carrying guards
to patrol the boundaries of parks and reserves.

Both zoo proponents and their
opponents rarely recognise that discussions about conservation radiate almost
exclusively from Europe, North America and Australia. Meanwhile, the voices of
those who actually live alongside the animals in question are ignored. To fill
their exhibits, zoos either breed animals or remove them from the wild. And
that leaves a trail of money behind each individual animal as it moves from one
enclosure to another along the long chain of captivity, bearing an uncomfortable
resemblance to other commodities that are traded under global capitalism including
slaves and human trafficking.

However, most of this money
doesn’t flow to the communities where these species naturally live. It flows
between professional (and sometimes illegal) wildlife traders and the coffers
of governments along the way. Sometimes animals move through intermediaries,
perhaps to remove any traces of their origins.

Zoos do invest in
conservation programmes, but the generosity of these exchanges is small
compared to the profits that are derived from the animals in their exhibits, or
the large sums that are spent on acquiring animals and creating zoo displays: in
2011 John
Fa and his colleagues calculated that investments in situ or in local
conservation efforts represented less than five percent of the total income of
zoos in the USA.

The people of the forests and
lowland swamps of Central Africa—the home of Harambe’s kin—don’t sit on the Board of the
Cincinnati Zoo. Communities in the arctic north are not part of the management
decisions for Walker, Victoria and Arktos, three polar bears at the UK’s Highland Wildlife Park.

In 2015 Big Game Parks, the trust that manages
three game reserves in Swaziland, sold 15 infant and three pregnant female wild
elephants to US zoos. The move was roundly
condemned by more than 80 experts as having “no single redeeming virtue.” Were local people’s views sought or listened to
in this transaction? My sources say no, yet many zoos continue to imply that their
exhibits exist to contribute to conservation in these regions.

What would happen if these communities
were asked for their opinions on how best to conserve animals with which they’ve
lived for generations? Instead of transporting elephants halfway around the
world, they might ask for support to move their village outside of a wild
elephant migration path. They might prefer that efforts were focused on
reducing carbon emissions so that polar bears and their human neighbours could
continue to live their lives successfully on the ice. They might also ask for assistance
to help buffer the impact of globalisation on their livelihoods so that trading,
hunting and poaching could be reduced.

My bookshelves are buckling under
the weight of science and discovery about animal cognition and culture that has
exploded in the last ten years. But my most treasured possession is a copy of a
book called A
Communion of Subjects, edited by Paul Waldau and Kimberly Patton, whose
pages echo with the stories of the many ways in which people across the world
relate to animals.

Many human cultures
understand that people and wildlife share the same spaces, and therefore need to
cohabit in order to survive. Human and non-human cultures alike are threatened by
pollution, deforestation and climate change. The destruction of the natural
world impoverishes everybody. So if we did ask local communities for their opinions on what to do
about these issues, we might be surprised by their suggestions.

But for these voices to be
heard, zoos have to abandon their dominant position in debates over
conservation, a position which overshadows the multitude of smaller views and
the wisdom they often represent. Zoos should speak with honesty about the work they
do and don’t do, and admit that many of their living exhibits are designed for
profit.

This honesty would allow their
visitors to have a much franker engagement with the issues surrounding
endangered species, one made more powerful by direct witness of the animals
they are discussing—like a silverback gorilla that has been robbed of his
heritage because he earns money for the zoo. It would also give zoos more leverage
to promote other attractions that are not mired in the same ethical
debates, such as species that are local to the region of the zoo, or computer
simulations and robotics.

When zoos cease to dominate
the conversation, the public will be able to hear how
they can empower local conservation efforts wherever apes, elephants,
dolphins and big cats are threatened—and what the stewards of their natural
habitats can do the stem these risks. By reversing the neo-colonial structure
of international conservation, this will put animals and people at the centre
of the debate.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
If you have any queries about republishing please contact us.
Please check individual images for licensing details.

Recent comments

openDemocracy is an independent, non-profit global media outlet, covering world affairs, ideas and culture, which seeks to challenge power and encourage democratic debate across the world. We publish high-quality investigative reporting and analysis; we train and mentor journalists and wider civil society; we publish in Russian, Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese and English.